The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has traced the appearance of suspected artificial intelligence-generated photographs in its preliminary register of voters to alleged misconduct by some registration officers who had access to its portal.

Lawrence Bayode, INEC’s director of information and communication technology, relayed the commission’s position on Friday on Arise Television, where he addressed the recent furore over the newly unveiled voter register.

The commission has faced backlash on social media after citizens flagged duplicate entries, suspected AI-generated photographs, and names of deceased persons on its register.

Screenshots shared by social media users showed entries from a polling unit in Etsako West LGA of Edo state with photographs suspected to have been generated by AI, raising concerns about discrepancies in the data.

However, Bayode linked the irregularities to some registration officers across the country, whom he claimed used their login details to introduce questionable records into the database.

“We have registration officers on the field. And these registration officers, they have login details to log into the system,” he said.

“So what we have found is that some of these registration officers, not all of them now, some of them across the states nationwide, they’ve done different things to bring these irregularities onto the register.

“Some of these pictures are AI-generated, but very bad registration. And this thing got into the register by the registration officers and because they have access to register people.”

He said the commission had found out how some of the irregularities occurred but could not explain why the officers introduced them.

“When the ABIS was run on the system, we saw these people. We know what they did. We know how they did it. But honestly, I don’t know why,” he said.

Bayode added that the commission had been cleaning up the register even before publishing the preliminary version, noting that it was under pressure to complete the exercise within the statutory 90-day period.